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[Aquillion]

While I know the silliness of magic threads, when you have an interesting idea you can't help but want to write it down... and at least here it will be in the right place when the time comes.

Anyhow, my idea is for schools of magic based around infusing objects and materials with temporary power.  I am not suggesting that these would be the only schools of magic; they would just be some of them.  The good thing about these, though, is that they make for a type of magic that would take advantage of Dwarf Fortress' diverse material and object system.

I am assuming, for this, that all objects will have 'spheres' to an extent, representing their mystical association although they may not be useful (many objects may just have 'default' spheres inherited from their larger material or type.)  This is of course something that will be valuable in many other aspects of magic, alchemy, and artifacts, not just here.  For instance, a ruby might have a sphere of fire, making it suitable for fire-type artifacts, useful as an ingredient for fire-based magic, or whatever.

Spheres will have associated magical effects.  These could then be drawn on by all sorts of types of magic and artifacts.

This form of magic, at least, would be divided into 'schools', which would be learned separately.  The primary reason for this is to prevent players from too easily accessing all magical effects -- placing some limits encourages them to work a bit more to find the right materials that their particular school needs to access effects from a particular sphere, rather than easily grabbing any sphere they want.  It adds more flavor and prevents anyone from becoming particularly powerful without heroic effort (or vast innate magical abilities), since they are limited to a small number of effects from that one school.  Most adventurers, as I see it, would only have the potential to become 'hedge wizards' at best, and most infused objects that you can purchase or trade for would be similarly weak (though potentially still useful.)  These are not artifacts.

A school will have its own innate spheres, representing the things it is best for.  It will be limited to infusing a general class of objects -- there might be a school of wand-crafting that crafts wands out of wood, metal, or stone (or perhaps only one of those), and infuses those.  There might be another school that infuses gemstones, or rings, or swords, or stranger things.

Each school will also have a power source, which influences what you have to do to infuse objects -- for instance, one school might be religious in nature, using prayer to imbue totems.  Another school might draw on innate power (and be useful only to those who have such power); yet another might use blood, or things along those lines.  If you use religion and prayer to infuse an object, the god whose power you draw on might influence the resulting spheres (and thus the power) of the end result.

These various distinctions will make it possible to procedurally generate a large number of different schools, based around grabbing things and gods that can be found in the civilization that developed that school, and refining them.

Note that the final spheres (and, therefore, the resulting power) of the imbued object would be both influenced by the innate spheres of the school you used to infuse it, and the type / material of the object.  Since the objects a school can infuse are limited to one specific type, the spheres you can get are similarly limited.  A school that uses alchemical procedures to infuse swords with fire powers might be able to vary their powers slightly by using different metals (or even wooden weapons), but the overall range of power they can access is constrained to include the inherent fire sphere of the school.

Schools might seem a little tightly constrained.  However, it would also be possible to make schools into a higher-level organization which contains many specific 'procedures', so you could have a school which teaches the procedure to imbue rings with concealment powers, and a procedure to imbue totems with protective powers, or whatever.  In this way characters could learn a wider variety of abilities at once (of course, schools wouldn't have to be limited to just this type of magic.)

A school would embody a larger body of magical and philosophical thought.  Learning one school might help you a bit in picking up others, but they'd be separate -- it would be difficult to pick up many different procedures from different schools, and much easier to just focus on one school.

(How would a sphere's powers be defined?  A sphere would need many different powers based on the situation under which those powers come into effect.  For instance, a 'worn' power for if the sphere is used to infuse jewelry or armor, a 'weapon' power for weapons, an 'invoked' power for spells or wands of that sphere, a 'stationary' power for statues, totems, and constructed objects, and so on.)

Anyhow, I'm curious what people think.  This is mostly just stream-of-consciousness, but I'm hoping some of the ideas here will be useful.

[Silverionmox]

I'll just put some concerns here:

- Common magic items should have a negligible or dubious effect, i.e. they should make a difference only in very closely-matched, or very specific situations. Otherwise, it will just be superior technology. Making its effectiveness random could also work technically, but I think that is a lazy black-box technique to run a game.

- Charging and using up wands, potions, etc. etc. seems to fit a consumerist society more than a medieval one, in which the main actor take pride in the lasting quality of their objects. A minor ointment that makes you heal faster is ok, but the stream of rare materials to put potions, etc. everywhere to be used up simply isn't available anywhere but the most develop dwarven fortresses, where they are guarded jealously. So those items - though they can be powerful - are typically only made on demand, to fulfill a particular purpose in a particular plan. They're not ready-made, off-the-shelf-goods available in every hamlet and in the pockets of every goblin.

As an alternative, I would make wands tools for shaping magic energy, helpful in the hands of a skilled user, but mostly dangerous to the user himself is he is unskilled.

- Lastly, sphere attributions would be very interesting if they overlap, and give according properties to the concoctions that are made with those ingredients. An alchemist preparing a potion might for example substitute bath wing for butterfly wings for the flying effect, but bats could also have the sphere association night, which would make it work only at night for example.

[Aquillion]

I'll just put some concerns here:

- Common magic items should have a negligible or dubious effect, i.e. they should make a difference only in very closely-matched, or very specific situations. Otherwise, it will just be superior technology. Making its effectiveness random could also work technically, but I think that is a lazy black-box technique to run a game.

- Charging and using up wands, potions, etc. etc. seems to fit a consumerist society more than a medieval one, in which the main actor take pride in the lasting quality of their objects. A minor ointment that makes you heal faster is ok, but the stream of rare materials to put potions, etc. everywhere to be used up simply isn't available anywhere but the most develop dwarven fortresses, where they are guarded jealously. So those items - though they can be powerful - are typically only made on demand, to fulfill a particular purpose in a particular plan. They're not ready-made, off-the-shelf-goods available in every hamlet and in the pockets of every goblin.

I didn't really mean to get into the discussion of how prevalent or powerful people want magic to be.  Really, that's a whole different subject.  Some things should be secrets.  Maybe secret techniques only handed down through the royal family or whatever.  The really powerful stuff would be both secret and would require extreme sources of power that few people could get, like being of an ancient race of wizards or having a tame dragon to help or something.

Mostly, though, I meant this as sort of a hedge-wizardry or low magic sort of thing.  For instance, there might be one old crone on the edge of a certain town who knows how to imbue amulets with minor protective charms that could last you for a journey, or whatever.  A mercenary might know how to cut his palm and smear his sword with his blood to make it burn before a battle.

The key word here is 'temporary'; I see the majority of these items as losing their power very quickly (as in, within a short period of time, whether they're used or not) and therefore being mainly useful only to the person who created them -- imbuing is primarily like a limited method of casting spells using implements, not a method of producing stuff to sell as goods.  That is part of the reason for infused powers to rapidly wear off over time (the other reason is to help preserve the importance of even minor artifacts and other 'proper' magic items, which have the distinction of lasting forever, or at least until something breaks them.)  The 'wands' I'm talking about therefore aren't like Nethack 50-charge wands you find in every shop.  They'd be tools that a skilled thaumaturge could infuse as one way of manifesting power on the world around them.  You can't set up a quick-e-mart to sell them in bulk, because their infused abilities would wear off too fast.

People would sell infused items as 'blessings', sort of, rather than as wondrous artifacts.  You might go to the old crone to get a trick or two up your sleeve before you go fight the cyclops, but she wouldn't be able to have a huge stockpile in her back room, and you wouldn't be able to load up on them (not usefully, anyway.)

This isn't supposed to be crafting.  An infusion is essentially something you do, not something you make, and is temporary by definition...  like a blessing, not an artifact.  Many historical charms and such were along those lines.

This would also be something more useful to an adventurer than in fortress mode, of course.  Aside from artifacts and a few other things, I think magic isn't planned to play a huge role in fortress mode.

[Silverionmox]

That's great, we're on the same level. This way magic would add to the diversity of a world, rather than dominate it.

[Tormy]

Anyhow, my idea is for schools of magic based around infusing objects and materials with temporary power. 

So basically your suggestion is: Enchanting magic. It has been suggested already in one of the bigger magic related threads.

[Aquillion]

So basically your suggestion is: Enchanting magic. It has been suggested already in one of the bigger magic related threads.

I'm really thinking more like using objects as a focus for magical effects, rather than enchanting them long term.  A more appropriate comparison might be to a dowsing rod -- you infuse it with dowsing power, you dowse with it, then you put it away; next time you want to use it, you infuse it again.

Things like that.

[Capntastic]

So basically your suggestion is: Enchanting magic. It has been suggested already in one of the bigger magic related threads.

I'm really thinking more like using objects as a focus for magical effects, rather than enchanting them long term.  A more appropriate comparison might be to a dowsing rod -- you infuse it with dowsing power, you dowse with it, then you put it away; next time you want to use it, you infuse it again.

Things like that.

So instead of casting a spell, you're casting a spell on something to use its spell-like effects?   

(Also, dowsing isn't traditionally considered 'magic' so much as a form of divination, which is something completely different than 'casting spells')